it was the artist's burden
by Annizap
Summary: Moths drowned in water, didn't they?


This is just a rather old (likely error filled) introduction I had for a pre-downfall BioShock roleplay a long time ago.  
>The person never replied, but I found this to be somewhat okay, and kept it anyway.<br>People on deviantART seemed to get a kick out of it, at least. ;}  
>- Jack.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>it was the artist's burden.<strong>

You could see it everywhere, couldn't you?

The dust was softly swept over everything, dirtying it, creating a layer of thick red grime with a blue tinge over a dream that had once been as abstract as the fortified glass settled on the bottom of the sea, as seemingly remote as the man seated in his office, somewhere back in Hephaestus mulling over official this and that. Dull things. _Boorriing_ things. Not at all like the conditions presented out here in the wild – not in the slightest. These were new, they said, **exciting**, like the fresh ink applied to lines of a scarlet poem or wild swipes of a mutated paintbrush with hairs jutting out every which way to the practiced painting. Things just felt.. drab though, ever since everyone had started spritzing their dust all over and ruining it. Even the speckled shimmers cascading upon the tiled floor were only a bleak gray – a stark contrast from the once pristine white and glowing ocean shimmers once glimmering like collected beads of sweat off of all of the new citizen's brows to make Rapture theirs. Ryan particularly liked that simile. He really had.  
>However, all that splendor was gone, only there when he had been one of the first to step off the bathysphere, as slack-jawed as the uncreative fools now fluttering around him. Now Rapture lacked the squeaky-clean sterility the walls once shined with. Everything was a dreary echo – the same dancers twirled in the hallways and stores outside, peeping in his art gallery like mice too pea-brained to understand the significance of his work and always muttering that awful Culpepper's name when looking his way. As if he was even on her level to be <em>compared<em> with. A sharp stitch in his side, he had yet to be able to dig apart the skin enough to yank her out. Despite her tendency to annoy and taunt him by flaunting her pathetic 'imagination', Anna Culpepper was as blind as the rest - as sightless as his beloved Ryan was beginning to go, and try as hard as he could, painted eyes couldn't replace real ones and even Steinman's scalpel missed the black surgery marks.  
>With the tools he was given, he was bestowed with talent and the gift to stunningly portray what others missed. In New York, he captured the haze of the puttering cars huffing and puffing about the overused roadways as they mimicked the aerodynamic styling's of airplanes, some hacking up sable coloured clouds. He had cupped in his palms, in splendid prose, the recitation of the every day life, death, and the in-between. He wrote of affairs and political scandals stemming from minor businesses to the uppermost governments that Andrew Ryan grew to oppose. Of those, countless hours of arduous work slaving over paper after piece of paper with curt writing and dramatic tension rising from the depths of the innermost human emotions only he knew of. He had snapshotted each and every one plus some, all taxed from dedication and the hope to be recognized for his ability, despite the surface world doubting it all with critical scoffs and crude eye rolls as they laughed away every second of his and others' lives captured like butterflies in a jar, expressed in poetry, prose, sculptures, and whatever else medium he had available.<p>

On the surface, they didn't have their eyes open, sealed shut with some pink eye, and were too blinded by the actual sunlight to grasp anything else but the normalcy they were subjected to. Underwater, thousands of feet below, he was still faced with the situation of under-appreciation, which drove him simply mad some days when he let it bother him and on other days it pushed him to attack the canvas with stark inspiration when the fickle bitch chose to rear her patterned face and give Rapture the gift of visualization it sorely needed. These citizens were all too wide-eyed, unable to view anything, not yet awoken from this dream as tiny shadows with crime tape yellow gazes snuck along the corners with specialized syringes and little melodies hidden with trauma – they sugarcoated those who noticed with innocent smiles of cracking lips, devilishly adorable as long as one ignored the bits of blood tainting the hems of their bright dresses mommy and daddy put on before sending them away for something _**better**_.

Even in the private collection of his paintings, where his ideals of perfection were lost in sepia tones of hellish days, these 'little sisters' skittered impishly, frozen to the canvas as horrified, weepy mothers were neatly blended into the background, nearly lost under the sunshine bright _(did he even remember what sunshine looked like at this point?)_signs screaming Fontaine's name and power. Ryan, had he spectated these with those dry eyes of his, would be jealous his name was no where in the paintings or drawings. But, it was the artist's burden to show the truth, to show what was and what was not, and to be the sun in a clouded world.

And Sander Cohen was the best memory of the sun Rapture had.

Sander Cohen showed the authenticity others censored themselves from. Hell, he was the poster boy of the Ryanist philosophy - the "songbird" as his rival had factually put it. His art reflected this metamorphosis of Rapture, of the beliefs, of these once rhythmically quivering people. The butterflies had let their colours droop – oh, where had his pretty, pretty butterflies gone? Where had the vibrant greens of grass patterns on their polka-dot dresses ran away to? Or the simmering red of a perfectly applied lipstick on the gorgeous women strutting around in Fort Frolic, fresh from working at Eve's Garden with once-upon-a-time ravishing eyes and confident smiles? They vanished, stolen in the middle of the night, and his work followed tune, leaving the paints and moving to the scaled grays of charcoal, always falling apart upon touching the paper and turning his hands an ocean's night black; adjusting the sculpting clay to make the visions singing chants in his head come to life, the sluggish off-white more bitter than a fresh squeeze of lemon into the eye. His butterflies had lost their wings and turned into moths.

** Moths** of all things! – those burrowing little pests who had enjoyed collecting in his small, now abandoned apartment when he lived on the surface, in New York. Damn things always died in his paint cans right when he needed that colour. Now, they had consumed Rapture's population, digging in deeper than the clothing and making once gorgeous wings disintegrate into questionable qualities. Fuckers got dust on everything when they touched it, rubbing their foul antennae together, flapping about the underground city, only perking when the rumoured disputes between Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine arose from the depths, when he and Culpepper started another newspaper review war, or as images of neon blue hypodermic needles, gene tonics, and ADAM flashed across their minds at night like children who used to dream of Christmas on the surface. Andrew was the fatuous Santa Claus, too bloated from eating gingerbread cookies to properly deal with Fontaine who eagerly hopped into the role of a charitable Jack Frost, saving the poor from the 'cold' Santa always brought in when he came to feast on the treats but conveniently forgot the gifts in the sleigh every time.  
>After all, they only got what they earned in Rapture – any less and they'd assume the parasitic role of those they had left above with the fresh breeze of summer, the humid scorch of the sun, and the romantic cheese of a moon stuck in the sky.<p>

Moths drowned in water, didn't anyone see that? Probably why they were so quick to fix leaks and, while they were at it, install shinier lights to keep attracting those nocturnal insects who still craved for illumination harshly. It was all so silly and laughable and _ridiculous_, but it **worked** because he became their assuring glint in the night, though that disgusting wretch they called Anna continually caused him to flicker. Moths also couldn't tell artificial luminosity from real radiance either, just as they couldn't turn their heads enough without snapping their necks to notice their butterfly wings were gone. As long as they could still float about, oblivious, they appeared to crave for nothing better. Why Ryan had accepted half of them, Sander could not comprehend.

It was all a real shame – just made his job that much harder, but he was an artist and he was dedicated to his cause. If not an artist, then he was nothing, and any true concepts of art went right with him. No one else could mix the colours with the same genteel precision as he, and **no** other could warm an old piano right back into playing condition, although young Fitzpatrick was gifted.. but far from good. The people of Rapture – what would they have done without him? Posters of his latest theatrical works lined the walls, advertisements in boasting colours, and even a few select musical pieces of his from previous albums hummed in unflawed unity inside the hulking beast of a city. It wasn't as heartwarming of dreams he still entertained of seeing his name in flashing lights on Broadway, the one he had left behind for this, but it was satisfying.  
>He was not only their eyes, but their voice, even if that hellish Culpepper managed to scream over his melodious tone. The solution for such an awful screech had not been found, but that was being worked on, and he moved to shift his thoughts onto the present.<p>

While it was so much easier to be caught up in the artistry of every day life, of the subtle hues between dawn and dusk and the blush trapped beneath a rainbow, it was always so difficult to stay attuned to what was going on now. Like the strange muttering from pacing figures cradling EVE that he often heard when on his nightly stroll about Fort Frolic or even made it to Arcadia to see if the moths had managed to turn the crystalline white of the waterfall to a dingy ink. It was much like the barely noticeable twitches some of the richer population known to use ADAM had gained as they continually relied more and more on the technology Fontaine was dishing out, profiting madly off of it. Though they were little things, they were growing - even J. S. Steinman seemed to be experimenting a little more with ADAM, often whispering to himself as he made his way to his apartment, a mad frenzy dancing a jig in his spectacled eyes.

This made him suspicious of the new opportunities presented. More then once he had been tempted to try it out, but he had resisted mostly due to being consumed by his latest pieces of work which prohibited the time to idly be dealing with the obsession of the uninspired. Untouched by ADAM, temptation still kissed him and tugged on his hand with sly winks, giggling and urging him to go and see what the talk of the town was. These distractions pushed him and he often took long breaks after submitting to a temper tantrum over the way his latest piece was going, disgruntled by everyone and everything before he found interest in sweeping down upon a poor onlooker who happened to wander in his store in hopes of finding some piece suitable enough to hang on some dismal wall in their dingy apartment. No one understood his art yet. Not a one.  
>Even at that exact moment as Sander looked contemplatively at the work in progress in front of him, his mind was adrift on other matters. He was just one of the dwindling numbers of unspliced humans who could afford it, but didn't. Andrew Ryan was starting to pay some heed to this trend as reports of hallucinations and other effects began to slowly accumulate as tonics were handed out like candy to crying children. Sander just found himself on the fence. People were disturbed, be it the rich or the poor, and those who couldn't afford it grew angrier over not being able to be as genetically modified in beneficial ways as those above them, and the rich spiraled off with oddities the doctors and nurses at the Medical Pavilion hesitated at diagnosing. But Ryan, such a simple, wonderful man, washed his hands of it. Like he had said only two days previously when Cohen had visited him to try and get him to get rid of Anna again - it was the <em>people<em> who kept control of their lives, Ryan reminded him. It was none of his concern unless it truly threatened the beliefs and principles Rapture was founded on.

Frowning at the thought, raising his head and moving a hand to brush back the two strands of hair that refused to blend neatly with the rest of his black coloured hair, he chiefly and dramatically raised a hand, hazel eyes narrowing at the sculpture before him as he loudly dropped the trimming hook, watching in dimmed, idle hues as it fell. The sharp crack emitted from the tile effectively caused one browser inside to jump, and the man turned and looked incredulously at Sander, posture giving him away as nervous as a little boy forced to address his wrongs publicly. Such a jittery moth. Precision laced his movements as Cohen grandly pivoted on his heel, the loathing seen moments ago on his facial features absent as he smiled apologetically, taking off the black art smock and proceeding to adjust his similarly shaded vest, vivid against the bleached white of his dress shirt.

"It's an artist's trauma," He sighed, shaking his head with some remorse, regarding the other male as if he could entirely relate, "To find faults in what others see as beauty.. wouldn't you agree?" Impatience curtly clipped his tongue, "I've been working on this for two weeks and I've gotten no where. The form is in it, don't you _see_? I just can't.." He trailed off, rolling his eyes and gesturing widely toward the man. "**It** refuses to come out no matter what I do."

The man swallowed thickly, barely able to disguise the confusion contorting his expression as his lips fell into a frown, nose wrinkling slightly as his eyes widened. "I don' do any art, 'm afraid." He replied back slowly, "The wife jus' wanted somethin' to hang near the table. I heard ya sell some of your stuff in here, so I came lookin'." A pathetic excuse for a laugh was wheezed out and it prematurely died into a cough. "Ha ha, ya know.. _women_, h-huh?"

Silence consumed and Sander diligently stared at the other, eyes narrowing with some emotion as a pregnant pause weighed the air heavily, water beginning to break. Crossing one arm across his upper abdomen and placing the elbow of the other upon this new support, he skimmed his fingers along the sides of his mouth, caught in contemplation. This man didn't even care about the subjects tantalizingly captured in any of his works, that much was as clear as the water outside; the realization of it was just as abundant and cold. Every artist had a temper and this one found his flaring when he stumbled upon people like _this_ - those who had no taste, those like the imbeciles in New York who had called him a hack, a fraud, and any other adjective they could toss out of their petty thinking spaces. The ones who missed the purpose of it all, who were too busy making up their own assumptions they skimmed every detail he had painstakingly and lovingly put in for _them_.

For **appreciation**.

Not to be treated as lowly in the artistry community as he had before, but to gain respect at what he truly excelled at, despite his egotistical view of it blocking much of the criticism. Certain thorns always stuck, though. Some picked out this talent, like Ryan had, and then others waltzed in like they were entitled to rip it to shreds and never bother to give him a chance to show the grandiose nature of it. His wife wanted it, huh? As foul words formulated with acrid intensity, he could hear Kyle upstairs, pausing in his duties to organize his finished pieces and maintain the gallery in Cohen's occasional absence.

"Well then," Words gritted out as he controlled the indignation spreading like a fungus inside of him. "Why don't you.. tell your _wife_ to come down tomorrow. Perhaps she can see the brilliance here. Until then, I'm afraid you'll have to leave. This is closing. Go explore the rest of Fort Frolic if you so choose, but for the problem of your dead tastes, I suggest Eve's Garden or even listening to the god awful crowing of Anna Culpepper."

Assisting the man out the door with a well planted push in the back, Cohen turned around after the door closed, folding the smock into a ball and tossing it beside the forgotten tool. Gazing longingly at the sculpture, he sighed and allowed a deep frown to carve its way onto his lips. Some things just weren't meant to be, but it did not mean he was giving up on it, not by a long shot. This merely marked another moment when his muse twirled off to some dark crevice to have an affair with another creative thinker and he was left to wonder if it'd ever return.  
>Shadows of fish passing by outside swam upon the floor, distorted by the ever shifting water, and unable to be entertained by the strange looking ones, he snatched his black suit jacket that was still assured in being quite sharp, but it was infinitely more casual then the usual tuxedo he wore on his busier days. Slipping it on and adjusting the narrow tie, making sure the vest was still neatly and orderly buttoned he smoothed down his collar, always needing to be prepared to face the masses in case a fan of his brilliance were to slip through the cracks of the thick skulls about him to request his conversational skills and a clever, quirky phrase or two that he always had to include to drive his nemesis insane when it spread and reached her. Sander wasn't going to let the intrusion of that sinking ship though, already heading out the door and leaving the clay to dry out as it so pleased. There was nothing more he could do to tend to it and it was a waste to tamper otherwise with the cruel fate denying him perfection.<p>

Today simply wasn't a productive day - despite waking up early and getting to work on two drawings, the sculpture, and a painting, nothing had yet to sprout with beauty from his famine plagued field. No one in Fort Frolic managed to kick any dirt of inspiration into his eyes anymore. They all blended into the same monotonous blurs with their repeating patterns of predictability, like rows of well trained marching soldiers, they were similar in stride and step and breathe. Hearing the doors clang behind him as he stepped out, admiring his well kept vicinity. To his left, the sign for Fleet Hall was illuminated and he knew one of his latest plays was getting ready to start inside. A smile ghosted his lips as he exhaled deeply, expelling the strong negativity that often accompanied him during the creative process. No one had said inventing new life and galaxies was easy in writing or any other form, but only the artist knew the honest vigours it ravaged from a person.

Inside, beyond the closed doors behind him, he could still hear his last album on the phonograph, playing one of his finger piano piece, _'Elegiac Equipoise'_, a slow and doleful piece that seemed to captivate the adoring population while he worked on _'Why Even Ask?'_ which, despite being **far** from finished, would hold one of his greatest pieces if he ever found the correct mood to work on it in. Then again, he realized as he smiled politely at a passing family and pushed the two strands of perpetually stray hair back only to feel it slide right where it had been, he still had to finish his other album that was nearly there. Left listless, he traced passing bodies and let his eyes bounce about the bobbing heads, searching for a familiar face.  
>Not wanting to return to Mercury Suites as soon as Anna was likely to be lingering in her apartment, probably just waiting to pounce out and denounce every ounce of artistic integrity he held in very high esteem, he glanced about for something to occupy him. The moths milled about, some weakly flapping their ways into Fleet Hall, and tender sounds of other piano and string pieces were sprinkled out, clashing against the current choice of a classical master's music playing in the main atrium area. With slow resolution, he tucked his hands into the pockets of the suit jacket, letting loose the obligatory suave and practiced smile to those who sought it out from one of Rapture's elite while attempting not to grimace at the stale taste of their grime floating in the air.<br>He hated moths just as much as he hated doubters, which was about the same acrimony he felt when finding he was lacking the tone of paint or last chunk of clay in the final phases of a masterpiece that then ended in utter destruction.

Steps slowing as he began the descent down the flight of main stairs that led to the hub of Fort Frolic, ignoring the various newspaper clippings pinned onto a makeshift board that was usually only dragged out when businesses were having major sales, but now it was informing of various ordeals in Rapture, from the beginning to be discovered side-effects of Plasmids and Gene Tonics to smaller articles informing of seemingly small scuffles over such products, Various articles even noted the growing unrest between Fontaine and Ryan, which had been escalating as those mutated in his home for the poor began to clash against the upper class citizens. Seven 'mysterious' deaths thus far and more was to come.  
>Yet, Sander had read and reread those select clippings before with activated interest as Rapture appeared to be progressing, but steadily away from Ryan's fading dream of a Utopia. Now it felt like a cage and it was no surprise people were beginning to rattle and slam against the bars, even if the realization was starting to make him - him, <em><strong>Sander Cohen<strong>_, of all the intellects in the deep blue sea! - uneasy with it all. Rapture promised to be better, swore it on every glass ceiling and triple checked screw, but if the journalists had their facts right, then petty crimes were beginning a new life as reports of mugging near Pauper's Drop and even in the better distracts streamed in, expanding into a river and soon a full blown flood.

Halting in his tracks and ignoring the raised eyebrows of those moving around him as he stood awkwardly in the center between the stairs and the small stage, his mind soaring somewhere else again as he suddenly looked to the right at whatever unfortunate fool happened to be there.

"It's a shame we can't replace this tiring old stand with something more.. deliciously eye-catching." A grin caught the corners of his lips in a stronghold, "It's also a shame that Andrew Ryan even let wasted carry-on morsels in, like the ones we're surrounded by down here. Oh, can't you _**feel**_ it?" With an actor's skill, he widened his eyes and pressed both hands over his heart, as if in pain as his head tilted slightly to the right. "Can't you feel the ADAM coursing through our veins? There's something happening, little moth, and we're placed right in the womb as it's birthed."


End file.
